New York: Andhra Pradesh is set to sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology to tap its vast resources in an attempt to boost the state's education sector, AP Information Technology and Communications Minister Ponnala Lakshmaiah said in Hyderabad on Wednesday.

The minister said the finer details are being worked out and the memorandum of understanding (MOU) will be signed within a few months.

The MOU will help tap the edX platform and open courseware of the prestigious institute located in Boston which will help in developing alternative learning mechanisms in the wake of serious dearth of qualified teaching professionals, Lakshmaiah said.

The proposed partnership will help Andhra's small and rural colleges to have access to the expensive labs using the iLabs technology of the MIT. The tie-up will also help in the development of utilization of Open Software Interface Definitions.

"The MIT faculty was pleasantly surprised to learn that Andhra Pradesh has about 700 engineering colleges and assured their cooperation in skill development," the minister said.

Lakshmaiah said the global potential of electronic hardware industry is estimated at USD 2.4 trillion by 2020 and the demand for the Indian market that stood at USD 45 billion is expected to touch USD 400 billion by 2020.

To explore this market, India's first electronic manufacturing cluster is to be set up in Hyderabad, the minister said.